Prying Stitches
by Shiggity Shwa
Summary: My take on if there was never a plane crash, how Jack and Kate would meet, though it be briefly.... It's in Jack's POV so you know its gotta be good.


_Hi guys, I'm really sorry for not writing much lately. I've been really busy and mentally unstable for the last little while (Although I still am…(both) I wrote this really quickly because I came home from work late and wanted to stick it to the man to show that I could still write after giving up 7 hours of my Saturday.  
And I got paid and in three more pay cheques (I'm Canadian remember? It's the only word I spell the Canadian way…basically just because I like the Q) I can go to Hawaii! Lol but you know I have to learn how to drive first.  
I'm not getting into it anymore because you wanna read about Jack and Kate, not Shiggity's bitchfest October '05.  
So presenting my fic on what would happen if the plane never crashed. This is how Jack and Kate would meet.  
_

Prying Stitches

The hanging pen that was attached to his clipboard swung methodically back and forth like a pendulum in an old grandfather clock. Around him the emergency room of the hospital rushed by him in a thunderous frantic swarm. He hated it down here, the air always felt so condensed and full of sickness, he'd much rather be back up on the eighth floor in his sterilized blue scrubs breathing the purified air that was pumped into the operating rooms.

He had been called down for a consult, and a simple one at that. An appendectomy, did it need to be removed Dr. Sheppard? Or should we leave it on in there? He sighed as he hurriedly rounded the corner; silently cursing the naïve medical students who thought that every belly ache and pin prick was a cancerous tumor and a major surgery.

On this shift alone, well the fifteen hours he'd been working so far, he'd been called down seven times, all of which resulted in false assumptions of diseases that were so uncommon, Jack had always pictured them somewhat mythological.

He marched to the nurse's station with quick, upset strides. He always hated being the on call ER doctor, his job was to operate on people not assess them, which is the reason he'd gone into surgery.

"Are you down here again?" Margery asked. She was an old friend of his, and had been a nurse probably longer then he'd been alive. Her face was very round and on the end of her piglet-like nose, her glasses teetered, "We should set you up a locker in the break room."

"It's the damn med students," Jack complained as he approached her, irritation etched in the tired wrinkles of his face, "They think every paper cut requires immediate surgery."

"Well it's how they learn, Jackie," she stated honestly with a friendly shrug as she turned to file some clipboards into their proper space.

"Well don't you think an attending or a resident can declare whether a fifty-nine year old woman has appendicitis or not?" he countered as he ran a hand over his weary yet agitated face.

She turned back to him with a slightly sly smile draped across her face, "I had to go through it with you Jackie." At the mention of the memory, Jack knew he was going to get a full recap and instantly his eyes rolled and he'd wished he'd never opened his mouth.

"As I remember it, you were quite the outgoing young man. Always eager to help, always wanting to learn and then at some point you shaved your hair off and decided that you hated any sort of contact with patients unless it was cutting them open," she informed arrogantly.

He let out a dry laugh and shook his head, "Or it could've been after Sarah."

As soon as he uttered those words, it was as if the whole busy ER suddenly stopped shifting and fell silent and still for a minute of lamentation. "I'm sorry Jack," Margery apologized grimly, realizing her faults.

"Don't worry about it," he replied softly. The tears stung his eyes, as they always did, but his father had warned him about crying, and what it portrayed when he was very young.

Biting his lip and looking down until the tears that covered his eyes securely, had dried up and disappeared then he quickly collected himself. "I'm looking for a Ms. Bar," he declared suddenly, dying to get away from Margery, the nurse's station and all the unresolved feelings that hung there.

"She's in examine room four Jackie," Margery answered solemnly, a pursed smile forming on her wrinkled face as she tried to busy herself with rechecking forms she'd gone through over a dozen times.

He gave her a respectful nod and headed off in the direction of the room. A patient screamed at him as he walked by, something about how the world would come to an end and then blathering out a string of numbers like a machine.

The smell of sickness and the pallid walls were making him become ill to his stomach, and he wanted nothing more to return back to his comfortable office on level eight and relax while working over some paperwork with a cup of coffee.

He opened the door to examine room four and found two empty beds and a woman, a few years younger then him. She watched him very closely; her green-gray eyes followed his every move like an animal stalking their prey. "She went home," she spoke up clearly, but quickly.

His eyes shot swiftly to her, holding all the pent up rage from his life. Her frail hand clutched a blood-soaked cloth to her other hand, and she flinched when his eyes overpowered hers, "She said she was feeling better, and just wanted to go home."

His teeth grinded against each other as an angry sweat broke out across his forehead. Before he knew what he was doing, he had uttered an enraged shout and hurled the clipboard across the room. The loud bang of it crashing against the wall and leaving a scuff seemed to calm him and drag him out of his irate trance.

He looked over to this woman, who in the five seconds of seeing him for the first time, saw him have a break down that he'd needed to have for the past five years. Her eyes were wide with shock and her hands trembled with fright.

Once again he ran his hand over his fatigued eyes and took a cleansing breathe, "I'm sorry," he mumbled as his eyes became clear once again, "I've just been having a bad, last few years."

Her face morphed into one of pity. Her eyebrows knitted with concern as her lips formed a rueful smile, "Well then I think you deserved at least that much of a breakdown."

He let out a small chuckle, and was relieved to be laughing once again. It seemed like the last time he laughed was with Sarah, but she seemed to ease away from his mind, "That looks pretty bad," he stated gesticulating towards her hand, "You want me to take care of it?"

"You're a surgeon aren't you?" She questioned hesitantly. The way her eyes glimmered in the industrial light made her injury seem all the more critical. He almost felt hurt flow through his body just by seeing her in pain.

"Yeah but I've got the time," he replied suavely with a small reassuring smile.

Glancing down at her hand, then back up to him, her eyebrow rose slightly, "Sure, you seem qualified enough," she stated with a hint of playfulness. Her smile widened as she adjusted her legs to support her injured hand.

He eased down into the chair beside the bed and for the first time, noticed how beautiful she was. Freckles spread out across her fair face in almost perfect formations, her eyes were deep, and guarded, but allowed as much emotion as she wanted to escape, and her curled, dark brown hair fell flawlessly over her shoulders, accenting her facial features faultlessly.

"What happened?" he asked nervously as he gently took her hand in his. His mind struggled to remember the last time he'd felt anxiety such as this, the wedding day perhaps?

"Clumsy me," she stated with a lighthearted roll of her eyes and a small grin, "I was putting up the drapes I made for my apartment, and I slipped and broke the window, and I guess you can make good assumptions."

He threw the cloth she'd been using to clot the blood to the side and rolled over a table nearby that had all the tools needed to suture her hand with, "Oh, you like sewing?" he asked automatically as his fingers ran across the lifeline of her hand.

"Not really, but it's cheaper then buying them made, and I have that old junk heap of a sewing machine I never use," she stated jokingly.

He smiled at her cheerfulness, but his trained eyes had spotted something off about her gash. It wasn't a clean cut, like one received from a shard of glass, it was jagged and uneven, like a slash received from a knife.

"I'm just going to clean this out a bit," he stated reluctantly as he poured water over the wound. He heard her take a deep inhalation and from the corner of his eye, saw her grip the bed sheet tight in her uninjured hand.

She watched him carefully and in complete silence. Something was gauche about her, untruthful and deceitful even. He refused to talk to liars. He hated liars.

Her clothes were slightly sullen and very worn. She wore a thin, pastel colored tank top and an old pair of holey blue jeans that didn't quite meet the bottom of her shirt.

After the freezing was administered, he threaded the needle quickly and began to sew up the toothed misleading gash. He felt the needle penetrate the tough skin of her palm, and noticed that she refused to look directly at the procedure. Her head was turned upwards and her beautiful eyes were staring directly at the opposite wall.

His eyes traveled across her body once again, noticing little scars and scratches across her arm while his hands mechanically continued stitching. Nothing really caught his eyes until he noticed a large contusion spread out across the bare skin of her stomach, hidden slightly by her top and pants.

He pulled the needle through a final time and tied off the last stitch. Reaching over to the table he pulled out a piece of gauze and taped it firmly over the newly sutured cut, "Done."

She gave her head a small shake, then looked down at the small fluffy piece of gauze hiding her injury, "Thank you," she announced sincerely, "I don't know how I can repay you; I would've been stuck here forever."

"You can tell me how you really got that cut," he stated suddenly, and wondered why he was getting so upset over a girl he'd just met or why he had suddenly become so attached and disgusted when he realized she was fibbing.

"What?" she questioned anxiously, "I told you I…"

"The cut is jagged, glass cuts cleaning into the skin," he informed her; his arms were now crossed with disappointment as his eyebrows feel into a somewhat angered position.

"Look, I don't know what you're talking about," she stated defensively, "I was just hanging my drapes and…"

"Is that how you got the bruise across you stomach?" he demanded furiously, "And all the other little scars and scratches on you? Is it because you fall off a chair everyday?" His body was heating up as his mind rambled.

"Look," she disclosed as she hastily moved off the bed and grabbed her coat, "I just came here to get my hand stitched and now that it's done, I'm going."

"Fine," Jack agreed and watched her walk by him quickly, then just before she'd left the room, he expressed, "But whoever he is, he's not worth it."

She turned around and dejectedly walked back towards him, "I thought so too and look what happened." Her face was grave and almost embarrassed for herself.

"We can give you protection," he informed lively. He wanted to help her, he had to help her, "We could send you to a shelter and…."

"No," she shook her head, her curls swayed with the movement, "The last thing I need is to be shoved in a house with a whole bunch of other women who made the same stupid mistake I did."

"Then what are you going to do?" he questioned as he crossed his hands and placed his chin upon them. He felt some strange connection to her. Sarah would've told him that it was because he knew her in a past life, or some garbage like that.

"I've been on the run for the last year, I thought he wouldn't catch me, but he did. I guess I'll just go to another city now," she informed with a innocent shrug.

"And let it happen all over again?" he queried, amazed that she was willing to keep going through with this, "You can stop this, right now."

"It's my problem, I'll work through it myself," She stated sternly as her trembling hand moved up and cautiously tucked her hair behind her ear.

He was about to reprimand her, when he realized that she had the same perspective on life as he did. The med students should've dealt with their own patients, while he'd been doing his own business. "Okay," he replied quietly and in defeat. His hazel eyes traveled up to her and almost begged her to reconsidered, but he could tell she was stubborn.

"Thanks a lot for your help though," she stated graciously as she fumbled nervously with the bottom of her top, "I don't even know your name."

"It's Dr. Sheppard, umm Jack," he stated finally as he stuck out his hand, making sure the one he received would be her good hand.

"I'm Kate," she replied as she shook it with a genuine grin. Her fingers were cold and trembled while in his hold. He didn't want her to leave; he wanted to help her, to take her home with him if needed be. She had a wonderful attitude and was gorgeous, she had deserved more then what had been dealt to her. "It was nice to meet you."

She turned and began to amble slowly away, as if waiting for him to beg her to stop. He flipped to her chart quickly, "Kate?" he questioned.

"Yeah?" she asked glancing over her shoulder at him, her eyes seemed almost dead, as if the doorway was a border between life and death, good and evil. Like as long as she was in examine room four with him, she'd be safe.

"It says here that your names Issabelle," he announced quizzically.

"I know," she replied gravely as she slowly left the room and melted into the busy crowd of the ER.

_I hope you guys enjoyed it, and it was meant so that there were a lot of questions that go unanswered. But this is a **ONESHOT! IT WILL NOT! I STRESS! NOT! BE CONTINUED UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES SHORT OF ME GROWING WINGS WINNING MILLIONS AND FLYING TO HAWAII TO RETIRE WITH A ONE ARMED SEA CAPTIN NAMED SVEN WHO CAN MASSAGE MY BACK!**_  
_Sorry if that seemed rude, but there's always one person who says "I can't wait for the next chapter," or "It's good continue". NO CONTINUING  
But I however have another oneshot in the works, and am on and off working on the next chapter to 'The Locke Problem" So I hope this assuaged you guys for now. _


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